Today is a special day. You are going to get your ass kicked in the middle of school for the very first time. I suggest you skip school today because even now, I’m not sure what we learned from that experience. So… turn around, do not get on that bus (public transportation fools!) Tell Mum that you’ve got the sniffles. After all, it’s the middle of February in Canada. Life doesn’t get more miserable. You don’t necessarily need to get beat.

Oh? You’re going to school, are you? Tupac just died and you want to be with your friends? Okay. Fair enough, Tupac was great. Just please, please put your stuff in the locker and go to class. Stop mingling with other students. You’re here to learn, not socialize! You’ll never be friends with any of these people after like… next year. So, try harder in math or something.

And this is where it all goes wrong. At first you were mingling in the hallways and now you are talking to a girl named Chantalle who more or less runs the hallways. You want to be cool, so you act tough. You say hello to her. NOW GO TO CLASS. Oh, but you aren’t going to do that are you? No. You’re going to engage in a sort of half nudging, half pushing fight with Chantalle. You’re going to say “Wud up, Chantalle?” and give her a nudge and then she’ll say “Wud up, Ingrid?” and give you a nudge and before you know it, you’ll be up against a locker, getting strangled by this b*tch. A crowd will form and NO ONE WILL HELP YOU! That part will be traumatizing, but just that part really.

Who knows who instigated the fight? I wouldn’t really say you got “bullied”, per se. I do know you didn’t stop yourself from pushing back when your “hello”s got a little heated. Pushing back is okay, except when you think you might get strangled. Aha! There’s the lesson, Ingrid. Finally. After all these years, we’ve figured it out! This is a lesson in brevity. Okay, fine. Go to school! I take it all back. This fight will inform that rest of your life.

If you decide to engage in the “wud up fight” with Chantalle, you will learn that most people don’t intervene when two people fight because… well, who knows? You will discover that the little s**t named Geoffrey will be the only stand up guy in your school because he will break it up. And you’ll learn that you’re not as tough as you think you are. Fighting is never okay. Even if you think you’re stronger than the other guy.

You’re going to get strangled today. But it’ll be okay because you’ll learn when to stop yourself before it’s too late (too late meaning getting your ass whooped in the middle of school, not death). YES!!!

Ingrid Haas is a left handed, middle child from Toronto (that's in Canada). She showers in the nude and calls Los Angeles home. She is an actor and a writer and regular performer at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre LA. You can follow her on www.twitter.com/ihaas or check out her website at www.ingridhaas.com

http://www.facebook.com/gea.marin Geanna Marín

I’ve never being bullied, nor bullied someone… But I can say -and I say it with ALL my pride- that I’m one of those few persons who stands up when someone is being bullied. I don’t do it to get a fight, I just cannot stand watching and do nothing to help a person who is being bullied… I just have to go and stop it.
Lucky for me for people usually known that I won’t stop shouting to stop it until they do.
I think there should be more people like me out there. I’m not saying that I’m perfect because I do this; I just know cases where the bullied commits suicide because nobody would help him/her in times of need… Then their classmates all would say things like “I always thought he/her was fine”, “it wasn’t that horrible! they only stalked that person and sometimes the hit him/her.” or “I thought I should help, but I didn’t want to get bullied, so I waited until someone help that person out.” and IT’S NOT OKAY, you know. If you really think of this things just do something, you can talk to your teachers, or parents, or you can do something yourself. You should not fear your classmates; you should befriend them… Help out everyone! I know it’s hard to stand up in front of someone -sometimes that someone being your friend. but, as professor Dumbledore said to Neville: “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”

http://www.facebook.com/ihaas Ingrid Haas

Hey! Thanks for everyone sharing their stories, some sad, some funny, all of them honest and heartfelt. Looking back is a difficult thing to do, especially when we regret what we did. But I find it useful to look back and laugh and hope to dear G-d that I’ve learned from whatever it is. In this case, forsure. Thanks for opening up and sharing with me, ladies. xoxo

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=513458955 Kaitlyn Shore

I have a distinct memory of a few girls CIRCLING me over something I don’t remember in kidnergarten. It was like hyenas to some meat. Ugh.

http://www.facebook.com/CrysOlson Crystal Olson

In second grade there was a boy named Michael who always bugged me. You know, teasing me, kicking me, stealing things so I would chase him, that kind of thing. One day I was really annoyed and I drilled him right in the face. Punched this boy so hard that his glasses broke in half. I feel bad about it to this day. He grew up to be about 6 foot 5 250lbs. He used to bounce at a bar my girlfriends and I would go to. So of course we mutully pretended not to know each other. But I would point out this huge kid and tell the tale of how I once beat him up.

http://www.facebook.com/MaryJoe28 MJ Rojas

I got knocked out cold in college when I kept instigating this huge girl because I wanted everyone to see she was a bully and I wasn’t crazy. Lesson learned: she won’t hit you in the middle of the classroom because she’s a bully but she’s also smart;BUT she will wait to hunt you after class and punch you in the jaw with dead accuracy. Even more important lesson, I learned that no one in my class was a friend of mine because when they got drilled for information on whom had hit who (I thought the HUGE bruise was a dead give away,but alas…), no one saw anything and no one knew anything. Even though they laughed when I fell to the floor.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=868805084 Jodi Styner

Oh, and my best friend in grade 8 was beat up for her eight-ball jacket. Remember those jackets? Highly coveted. She got a hairline fracture and eventually had to have jaw surgery to fix it. Nobody beat me up for my shiny Garth Brooks jacket. Weird.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=868805084 Jodi Styner

I got strangled in the lunch room by a girl two years my junior. She was also the lunch lady’s daughter, so she just got a hug for doing it because she was little so, like, was she ever really a threat? I remember doing nothing at all to instigate this strangling, but it happened in the lineup for the microwave, so there’s a chance I budged in front of her, whether I meant to or not. It happened from behind, so I didn’t see it coming and it scared the ever living snot out of me. But it was also February in Canada, so maybe little Ruth had just had enough of winter and she just snapped.

http://www.facebook.com/imakraziebubble Ashley Lane

oh boy…. so many memories of people taunting me and throwing things at me on the bus, I even have a battle scar on my forehead between my eyebrows. Lucky me its only a small one. The thing i learned was that the people doing the bullying had way more issues than i ever would. So im still a firm believer in KARMA.Im a strong. independant, very blessed and happy these days. And all the peeps that effed with me, well, all i can say is the’ll get theirs. ha!!!!!

Becca Sands

I’ve only been verbally bullied, never physically. But in 10th grade, a girl who I thought used to be my friend in first grade told me I once punched her in the face during recess. I have no memory of this and am choosing to believe it did not happen. Liars are disgusting.

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